We know that many of you are still glowing from the awesomeness that was Burning Seed 2017 (dare we say best Seed ever?). That hasn’t stopped our committed crew of event organisers from beginning the task of planning for 2018. The effigy burns in less than 10 months so someone better get onto it right?

Each year the Burning Seed Summit is an opportunity for our Team Leads, Facilitators, Town Councillors and Directors to get together to run a fine tooth comb over our last Burn and more importantly start to shape out what things will look like for next year. On the 24th and 25th of November around 30 of our event leads headed to Commonground, around an hour north of Melbourne, for two days of great discussions, lively debates, collaboration, learning, and bonding.

One important thing to remember is that most people present had already volunteered hundreds of hours in the lead up to and during the event to make Deeper Space a reality. They are the people who were onsite weeks before the event building the infrastructure for our city, making sure the toilets were going to be awesome, answering your emails throughout the year, applying for our permits and insurance, liaising with local emergency services, ensuring you can buy a ticket, engaging with our artists and theme camps, paying the bills, and so very much more. Then after the event they come together, gifting more of their time to our community, to ensure that we learn, grow, and make the next Burn the best yet.

Much of the time spent at Summit is reviewing operational activities and looking at what improvements can be made, no matter how small they may seem to our participants. We also acknowledge and thank those leads who are stepping down and vote in any new Facilitators and Team Leads who ready to go. Don’t think for one second though that we don’t have any positions available for keen Burners looking to get involved. Many critical leadership positions are still open. You can find a list of them on our website, and look out for a blog from our Crew Wranglers in the next week highlighting some of these key vacancies.

Your Burning Seed Crew at the 2017 Summit

There are, of course, also some bigger decisions to be made that affect everyone attending Seed. These include our theme, which was announced last week (Ancient Futures for those that missed it), our location, which we are very happy to say we again plan to be Matong State Forest, and the event dates. Burning Seed 2018 will run from midday Wednesday 26th September, to midday Tuesday October 2nd. That’s right kids, we are going an extra day in 2018 and all participants will have until midday Tuesday to leave the site.

One very exciting aspect of the extra day is that we will have the first ever closing ceremony at dusk on Monday. This will serve as wonderful conclusion to our time in Red Earth City and more details will come to light as planning begins in the new year. There won’t be any scheduled events or music after sunset on Monday in order to ensure that everyone is ready for the drive home on Tuesday. As always, theme camps, artists, and critical crew will have extra time to pack down and leave and this will be communicated to them closer to the event.

The Burning Seed Summit is the first step in our long journey to Burning Seed 2018 - Ancient Futures. The event organisers are excited and ready to help make this happen. Now we need you, the participants of Burning Seed, to do your part.

What are you going to do in 2018? How will you be involved? Begin thinking about your art, your theme camp, your gifts, and most importantly how you will step-up as a volunteer and resident of Red Earth City.